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Summer, Lately: Celebrations & Life With a 12 Month Old
We had a beautiful month of June here in South Bohemia. I have to say that I feel like I was so tired for at least half the month and had no idea why… until I realized that the allergy meds I am taking every other day for hay fever make me terribly drowsy. I am quite ready for allergy season to be over (still sneezing) but at least June was spent in a dreamy sort of daze. It started with a beautiful choir concert performed at a little festival in an apple orchard near Lišov. What an amazing setting and reminder (just when I really needed it) of how…
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I Want You To Know.
Dear Our One-Year-Old Growing Little Mouse, This week you turned one! Your first year has both flown by and yet also I can recall every little step of the way, every week with every little new change that happened between last summer and now. It has been one of the greatest years of our lives, being together with you and seeing you grow. Your parents traveled to the Czech Republic over ten years ago – we decided to embark on a big adventure, partially because of the yet unsatisfied curiosity of wanting to experience living in another country and have some international adventures. I felt that there was always some…
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To Pass or Not to Pass: An Evergreen Language-Learning Struggle
It is getting more and more embarrassing to tell people that we have been living in the Czech Republic for a whole decade… generally, because of the state of our Czech language ability. That is not to say that it is absolutely poor exactly… it’s just not… “living there ten years” quality. The other week our baby’s cardiologist said, when I reminded him that we usually speak English together, replied with a benign but just as soul-piercing, “oh sorry, I forgot that you don’t speak any Czech”. Ouch! I got through sixteen days in Czech hospital and can’t bother to try during one doctor appointment? Now, I am a language…
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Going to Rome With a Baby! Our Experience & Tips
Ciao, all! We had our first family vacation that was just the three of us last month. Sadly, Ferdie couldn’t come as we were headed to ROME, home to some of the best museums in the world and managing it with a dog plus a nine-month-old wasn’t the most relaxing-sounding thing. It was a wonderful trip! I’d been dreaming of returning to Italy for a long while now… and then the pandemic happened. As of last summer, things are running pretty normally in Italy and even though we couldn’t have our babymoon there as I wanted, it was so fun taking Baby M there and enjoying it as a family.…
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Having a Baby in the Czech Republic? (non-EU national) Legal Steps You Need to Take
First off, this is an informational post particularly written for all of us confused non-EU foreigners living in the Czech Republic that are not able to get the straight answers that you need about what exactly to do and in what order after having a child here. I am writing this just for you, to save you the hassle that we ourselves had to go through. Please take heed of the steps because there is a very specific order they need to be accomplished in, even though this order cannot be found anywhere online that I’ve seen. In short, there are 5 things you need to obtain on behalf of…
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The Books of 2022
I really thought I wouldn’t read that much this year. Fed up with reading a bunch of titles last year for book club that I wasn’t that interested in last year, I jumped in and did a bunch of baby/pregnancy-related reading in the first half of the year, figuring that was all I’d get around to once I had the baby. Boy was I wrong. Enter: breastfeeding sessions. I was not privy to all that breastfeeding a baby entails (in many ways, honestly). But basically, it means that every 3-4 hours, you are hanging out feeding your baby, something which takes little active effort from you, for at least thirty…
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Year of Life & Travels: 2022
2022 was such a big beautiful year, especially compared with the two that came before it. This was the year I finished out my first full school year (not online at all!) at my new place of work. I worked my little booty off, knowing it would be the end of my free time, earning both an Intermediate Certificate in Herbalism (two years of work!) in late April and a B2 Certificate (Upper-Intermediate) in German language achievement from the Goethe-Zentrum in early June. But obviously, the biggest thing – I spent the first half of the year growing a baby! In the middle of the year, giving birth, and the…
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Life Lately: And That Was Autumn With a Baby
Now with a five-month-old, I can barely sit at a computer for more than ten minutes each day – I’m embarrassed that this post took me about two months to finally publish. I am really taking to heart “sleep when the baby sleeps” so my very few minutes of free time is going to rest and self-care. Sometimes I manage to write a whole e-mail. With an infant that is demanding more and more attention daily, that is definitely what’s working for me right now. With Alex back to work in mid-September after about two and a half months as a new little family, things have reached a new level…
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The Perks of a Summer Spent at Home
The only other August I’ve ever spent so much time here in the Czech Republic was the year I got married (2015), and that was after two months away! I’ve called this year our “Baby Summer of 2022” as things are clearly a bit different with an infant. As we’ve been very much around, one thing which has firmly taken a place in our summer rituals is that of the weekly farmer’s market visit. We have a beautiful bi-weekly market in Piaristické Square here in Budejovice… I think I’ve never been to a market in a more beautiful setting than this one. As we aren’t getting a CSA (community-supported agriculture)…
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The Third Trimester & My Pregnancy Favorites
Happy summer, friends! We’ve been hanging out in South Bohemia as a new little family since our release from the hospital and it’s been such a nice slow time getting adjusted to the rhythms of life with a newborn. Our little one is already two months old now and I’ve been so lucky to have Alex off work until the start of the new school year and here at home. Thanks again for all the kind well wishes, messages and even gifts from some dear online friends. I never got to do a third trimester recap (clearly) – it was my shortest and unexpectedly toughest trimester, having been diagnosed with…
